Page 20

ALEXEI

S tef comes out of the back, carrying a plate of food, closely followed by a man in chef’s whites. Though I imagine this is his dad, he doesn’t really look like him. It’s only when he gets closer, I see the resemblance in the nose and around the eyes.

The chef gives me a big, warm smile and shakes my hand.

“I’m Tolis,” he says. “Stefanos’ father, welcome.”

“Alexei,” I say. “Thanks for helping out with the donations, I really appreciate it.”

He waves his hand like it’s nothing. “Happy to help. A friend of Stef’s is a friend of ours.”

That makes me smile. A ball of warmth in the pit of my stomach.

Stef looks shy and I want to reassure him, tell him his dad is nice, not embarrassing like he probably thinks.

“Sit, eat, what can I get you?”

“I hear the keftedes are pretty good here.”

The older man’s eyes light up, like I surprised him.

“You heard right, I’ll bring you a plate.”

I feel like I’m at someone’s house, not a restaurant.

Like a family just welcomed me into their home.

Maybe that’s why the place is so packed?

The waitress laughing with the customers and calling them by name.

The old guy in the corner, reading a newspaper and drinking an espresso.

It’s a place in a busy city where people can go to feel at home.

Something human amidst all the construction work and cars.

And yet it’s distinctly New York too. The different languages being spoken on nearby tables.

English, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, I think.

I look around like a kid in a candy store at all the decorations on the walls.

Black and white photographs of Greece. What looks like families posing for portraits.

Musicians with instruments I don’t recognize.

Little ornaments on the walls, like saints I recognize from my own apartment growing up, a cross, one of those blue eye-like things I’ve seen somewhere before.

Stef’s eating when I look up, not paying much attention to me, and I worry suddenly that I’m intruding on his family time. “I hope it’s okay I took you up on the offer.”

He looks up, those eyes again, fuck.

“Course, I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t want you to come.”

That blush is fucking adorable. My stomach flips and I try to switch my brain off.

I came here to hang out with my roommate and eat some keftedes, whatever the fuck that is.

Can’t be worse than meat jelly at least. And to pick up some donations for the refugee center.

I didn’t come here for any other reason.

There’s music playing in the background, the kind of thing you’d hear in a romantic movie about a bored housewife who moves to a Greek island and falls in love with a sexy carpenter. Stef tucks a strand of hair behind his ear before scooping up some meatballs onto his fork.

“Is that keftedes?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s just meatballs.”

“I trust you. And a little hint, if you ever go to an Eastern European place, don’t order the holodets.”

“Why not?”

“Just trust me.”

He smiles, dropping his big brown eyes shyly to his plate. “Okay.”

Fuck.

His dad brings out a huge plate of what Stef’s eating, with an extra plate of salad glistening with olive oil and cubes of feta, and potatoes. He watches as I take the first bite.

The keftedes are delicious. Juicy inside, with a bit of a crisp exterior. A pork taste, with onion and herbs. It’s like an orgasm in the mouth. I can’t say that though obviously. I just hum and nod around the food and he gets it.

He laughs, slapping my back before disappearing into the kitchen.

Before I can say anything else, the waitress comes over and pulls Stef out of his seat by the arm. She looks like she’s gonna pull it out of the socket, but he’s still smiling.

“Stefanos will play the violin for us now,” she announces to the whole restaurant.

I’m horrified for him, but Stef looks like he was expecting this. The people in the restaurant start clapping and Stef allows himself to be led somewhere, I’m assuming to get his violin.

The doors open and a smartly dressed elderly man comes in and is instantly hugged and kissed by the waitress. She sits him at my table - I guess because it’s the only one left - introducing me as Stef’s friend from college.

“Nice to meet you young man,” he says with a bit of an accent, shaking my hand over the table. “I’m Stefanos’ grandfather, I heard he was playing his violin for us tonight.”

I’m starting to get nervous for him now. All this pressure. All these eyes.

But when Stef comes out with his violin and I see it out of the case for the first time, he looks serene. He glances over to our table and waves at his grandfather before taking a seat where a couple have been laid out in front of the whole restaurant.

A young woman takes the other chair and they have a quiet discussion, both smiling, before the woman starts clicking her fingers together, castanets making a sound that makes everyone in the room shut up and watch.

The customers all look enraptured, waiting to see what’s going to happen.

My own heart is already pounding in my ears.

Nervous for Stef, but also excited to see something new.

I’ve barely stepped out the neighborhood where I’ve lived my whole life, and as multi-cultural as Brooklyn is, we always eat at Eastern European restaurants, (or McDonald’s), and this is all new to me.

When he starts playing, I’m completely floored.

I’ve heard this sound before, in music on TV.

If I wasn’t in a Greek restaurant and aware of Stef’s heritage, I might be excused for mixing it up with Turkish or Arabic music.

It has that mournful sort of feel that reminds you of sun waves beating down on swathes of sand.

Camels dragging their humps across the desert.

It starts off slow and speeds up, and then remains at a steady pace.

And then the woman with the castanets starts singing, her voice like liquid silk.

Everybody in the room, whether they were speaking English, Turkish, whatever, pay attention. I have no idea what she’s singing about because I guess she’s singing in Greek, but the way she’s singing, it’s like she’s making you feel what she feels without you needing to know the language.

The customers are enraptured by the singer, but I’m solely focused on Stef.

The look of pure concentration on his face as he drags the bow along the strings of his violin.

He’s tied his hair out of the way and I can see the smooth, long line of his neck.

I watch his long, slender fingers as they work along his instrument.

The way his pale skin looks against the golden hue of his hair under the lights.

Something gnaws in my stomach as I watch him and I melt into it, feeling drunk.

I don’t pull my gaze from him until he finishes playing and the restaurant erupts into applause. I catch his grandfather’s pride as he claps with a big smile on his face. His dad standing in the doorway of the kitchen, clapping and nodding to his wife.

The waitress shouts “encore!” and they start playing a new song.

Both Stef and the singer already getting a sweat on under the hot lights, but smiling their heads off as they slide into a new number.

This one’s faster and I’m amazed by the speed of Stef’s hand on the bow, his fingers on the - neck? – of his instrument.

When this one finishes, the singer leans into Stef and for a second, something ugly rears its head. A streak of jealousy at their closeness. At how much she knows him. How she shares this part of him that’s obviously important. A part I’m completely ignorant about.

Stef stands up and there are a few good-natured groans before the singer leans into the mic and tells them he’s just switching instruments.

Switching instruments? He can play more than one?

I remember him saying something about an instrument beginning with B now, something I’d never heard of.

He pulls this guitar-looking thing out and sits back down.

He starts playing without fanfare and the audience, who had been getting noisy again in the interlude, all shut the fuck up again and listen, all eyes on Stef.

He isn’t concentrating on them though, the only person he looks at is the singer, and when he starts to speed up and she clicks her castanets again, they smile at each other and I push that little lilt of jealousy back down when I see how happy he is, doing what he loves, in his home, surrounded by his family and people rooting for him.

When he starts singing too, it’s like my body floods with heat.

I’ve never heard him speak anything but English before and his proficiency in another language shouldn’t surprise me.

I can speak Russian pretty fluently, why wouldn’t Stef speak his family’s language just as competently?

It’s just that, with the instruments and the singing, I don’t think it could be physically possible for me to be any more impressed by a person than I am right now.

I could literally sit here all night listening to him play whatever and sing.

After this song, they get up and bow, the diners whistling and clapping loudly for them. Stef looks flushed when he turns to his dad and smiles.

That look they share. It kills me dead. I don’t think I’ve ever shared a look like that with my dad.

His dad’s looking at him like he couldn’t be prouder.

Like he has zero notes for improvement. Just wants him to keep doing what he’s doing, exactly how he’s doing it, and no matter what, he’ll support it.

I’m shy when Stef comes back to the table, but luckily he’s distracted by his grandfather. The waitress comes over and sets some deserts down, winking at Stef’s grandfather before going away again.

“Pappous, you’re not supposed to have too much sugar,” Stef says.